Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to management of data strategy and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for adjusting data strategy of network data in a terminal.
Description of the Related Art
Advances in network communication and signal processing have allowed more terminal products to carry out networking functions. For example, a mobile terminal, such as a smart phone, can now communicate over a wireless local area network (WLAN), such as WIFI network, or a mobile communication network (e.g., 2G, 3G, 4G, and etc.).
Since pricing between networks may differ significantly (e.g., the cost under a mobile network is much higher than that under a wired network), applications may identify the current connection mode and adjust the data usage strategy accordingly. By way of example, a shopping application in a terminal executing over a 2G network, may display photos and images as an icon or may even refrain from displaying images or photos. Over a 3G network, the photos or images may be displayed as a thumbnail or a small picture. Finally, over a WLAN, the photos or images may be displayed as a large picture or a high resolution picture.
However, when the terminal connects to a mobile network using a hotspot provider, such as a smart phone, the connection to the hotspot provider may be over WLAN. In this instance, the terminal connected to the hotspot provider may execute in accordance with WLAN, so as to adopt the data use strategy of the connection to the hotspot provider. However, not only would this arrangement make it difficult to display high-resolution or large pictures, but it may also cause the hotspot provider to consume a large amount of data. Therefore, it may be impossible to conserve data. That is, the terminal connected to the hotspot provider may consume more data than the hotspot provider itself.
For example, when a video playback application is activated and the terminal is using a 3G network, the video application may present the following prompt: “You are currently using the 3G network, and playback of any video will consume a large amount of data, will you like to continue the playback?” However, when the terminal is connected to a WLAN, the video may play without any prompt. Therefore, if terminal A using a 3G network is a hotspot provider for terminal B and terminal B connects to terminal A using WLAN, a video application in terminal B may detect the WLAN connection and use the data strategy under WLAN. That is, the application will playback the video directly without any prompt, which causes excessive data consumption by terminal A.
Some terminals try to avoid the excess data usage by installing software that limits the amount of data. However, regardless of whether a maximum data amount is set per day or whether the data ratio of the hotspot is limited, it is impossible to prevent the terminal connected to the hotspot over WLAN from consuming data continuously. Thus, the terminal may simply reach the maximum data limits sooner and preclude additional data from being consumed. Furthermore, because the terminal connected to the hotspot uses data in accordance with WLAN, a user's experience with many network applications may be devalued.
Some application software may prompt the user to manually set the data options, such as 2G/3G/WIFI, whenever the network connection is switched. However, setting the data options manually every time the network switches, may involve frequent toggling of background data synchronization. This may also significantly devalue a user's experience. Furthermore, not all users know this setting or are willing to adjust this setting. For users with many applications, each used application may need to be set, which may be inconvenient. While the data strategy may be adjusted in accordance with the network bandwidth, this may considerably increase the design complexity and may also raise the risk of error. Moreover, a hotspot may want to allow the terminal connected thereto to use WIFI even when there is not enough bandwidth. Therefore, a user may not want to adjust the data strategy completely, depending on the bandwidth, because this may make the user's experience even worse.
As such, it may be difficult to adjust the data strategy efficiently using conventional terminals.